OS X Software Development Sucks

In modern software development, the objective is to create flexible, modular architectures that allow the software to quickly adapt to changing business requirements. There are a number of side benefits with organizing your software in this manner.  In particular, by modularizing your software into independently distributable components one maximizes the original cost of development due to the reusability of that component. For example, rather than copy-n-pasting lines of code everywhere, you bundle the damn stuff in a DLL. That dll can then be reused. Moreover, that DLL can now have its own life-cycle.   

I’ve performed the majority of my software development on the windows platform. In this environment, we are apparently spoiled by the vast numbers of 3rd party software vendors that sell components. In most cases,  you simply drop them right into your software project and with minimal integration (especially with .NET components) you just start using them right away. You can purchase Graphing libraries, Math libraries, Custom GUI Controls, Networking libraries and there are usually 5 or six offerings to choose from per component. By having this components “ready-made”, it allows me to spend my precious time and money on getting my specific business logic working an into my customers hands, rather than completely wasting it on trying develop it myself or managing a bunch of loose files into my project.   

In my frankly brief experience in Mac development, it seems that commercially supported 3rd party software components is non-existent.  I’ve been considering the development an application I’ve been mulling over in my spare time. I’d love for it to be on the Mac with it sexy user interface, high performance libraries and 64-bit support. However, about 3 weeks into prototyping i’ve struggled to get even the basics down. Database support is nearly none existent. A DataGrid user control is no where to be found. The OutlineView sucks ASS! And there are no 3rd party diagramming libraries to speak of.    

This effective has put a full stop to my Cocoa development for this project until Apple decides to update their control choices and the 3rd Party Software Vendors start to market themselves better.    

Oh, and there is no way in hell I’m gonna entertain Java for this app on this platform.